the line from ch. 5, previously ch. 4 is so heartwrenching just on its own š thank you for sharing your previews!!! also: while it's controversial, as a fellow disliker of much of moffat's writing, i've never been the biggest fan of much of 11's era so i'm very excited to see your changes to the plots in general (not including the obvious rewrites to fit in rose's return) :] i've left quite a few messages like this over time so i don't want to get too repetitive, but i can't thank you enough for sharing your work and for all the time and energy you've put into it for free
thank you pal!! I promise I never get tired of repetitive validation & praise lol, thatās like a solid chunk of why I do this š and yes that sentence is particularly cruel of me to just leak with no context but I stand by my cruelty in the hopes that it hurts just as much in context
Originally I was overthinking the plot re-structures for these episodes (genuinely was blocked for like a month just because I was trying to figure out another way for the star whale plot to work if there didnāt need to be an engine, it turned out to be Too Complicated and Too Distracting From The Main Story for a random side episode so I went back to smth much closer to the original) but once I figured out the Big Alteration Iām making to the overall season arc, things started falling into place moreā¦ all this to say, a few eps may look deceptively like āthis is just the original but Rose is here!ā but Iām trying to do it in a way where thereās a lot of weight to little things, a lot of characterisation moments, a lot of clues leading up to the Big Alterationā¦
this is probably gonna be the longest one yet and may require substantial pruning, bc I already am over 50k words and have written likeā¦ 3 episodesā¦ plus some bits in between but still
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INSANE story. If i had been born to the lovesong of j alfred prufrock i would have been such an insufferable 20-something that morrisey himself would have given me the title willingly. I am so jealous
lol I fear I am currently that insufferable, my personality is p much the expected result of allowing English professors to procreateā¦ they had three children and named one after a modernist poet and another after a Greek muse and for several years Prufrock was their wifi passwordā¦ when I get drunk Iāve been known to recite Chaucer in Middle Englishā¦
difficult question, indecisive so you get a few answers with different criteria:
-song I have most listened to all time on Spotify: āCartaā by Silvana Estrada
-song I think is perhaps the most perfect (which is different from being my experiential favorite): āGod Only Knowsā by the Beach Boys
-song I play when I most want to reach for joy: āNUEVAYoLā by Bad Bunny šµš·
-karaoke go-to: āWake Up Aloneā by Amy Winehouse (but it would be āGood Luck, Good Nightā by Silvana Estrada if American karaoke establishments werenāt cowards lol)
-song that feels most like a nostalgic warm hug: āWeāre Gonna Be Friendsā by the White Stripes
-bonus, not a song bc no singing, but a piece of instrumental classical music I love the most: Chopinās Nocturne Op. 48 No. 2 in F# minor
I love your wolf at the door series very much, and im really excited for your retelling of season 5. Ive read a couple retellings of season 5 with rose included and im aleays excited to see how amy and rory fit into a story with rose in it. Can you give any idea of how those relationships are going to be, maybe ??
hi and thank you!! hope you're ready for a Long Answer because I don't seem to be able to do short ones these days :)
So, first thing's first. I feel like I can't explain my Rose & Amy & Rory dynamics without addressing how most Pond-Era rewrites with Rose are set up. Basically, most fics set in this era have one out of two core Doctor/Rose vibes which then impact all the other character relationships:
The Doctor and Rose were either never separated OR they reunited a long time ago, and now they're super married. In these types of stories, the regeneration causes a bit of a shakeup in their dynamic but only a very minor one, and they are baseline happy.
The Doctor meets little Amelia (and eventually grown-up Amy) while alone, and at some point during his travels with her and Rory, Rose comes back all of a sudden.
In scenario 1, usually Rose has a sort of warm maternal relationship with Amy, who looks up to her in return. Sometimes this results in a little less closeness between Amy and the Doctor in canon, sometimes not. In scenario 2, usually Amy is shown as very jealous of Rose (and sometimes it's mutual), because she didn't know Rose existed until she showed up out of nowhere and now suddenly she's the most important person in the Doctor's life instead of Amy.
Regardless of whether a fic uses scenario 1 or 2, usually Rose and Rory get along well. They are often written as the "sensible" (though jeopardy-friendly) counterparts to their daring/reckless partners. I do think Rose and Rory would get along, but I feel like this justification sells them both a bit short.
NOW. In my story, we're working with scenario 3. (Actual Plot Spoilers for the Howling books 1-4 and like relationship vibe spoilers for book 5 below)
3. Rose has just returned to being human(ish) after being a chaotic, destructive Eldritch Terror in constant agony who definitely destroyed several inhabited planets (and many more uninhabited ones) for good. She's sort of like Nine right now, operating out of an extreme level of guilt and self-loathing and feeling undeserving of love and also feeling an obligation to do as much good in the universe as possible as a form of penance. Eleven, on the other hand, also went through the wringer in Rose's absence BUT he wasn't alone. Martha and Donna absolutely helped him heal from losing the love of his lives, but now she's back! He's ecstatic to have her back, so much so that he's inclined to overlook all the Eldritch Terror planet-eating stuff, and he's got this deep and vivid fear of losing her again. Add to that new-regeneration-insecurity and we've got ourselves a party.
So, how does this impact their relationships with the Ponds?
Well, for one thing, young Amelia has two mad people in a box appear in her backyard, not just one. She grows up idolizing the pair of them, and when she and Rory play make-believe, she dresses up as Rose and he dresses up as the Doctor. So when older Amy meets them both, sheās built up this image in her head of the pair of them that isnāt wholly accurateāthe Doctor as a goofy, swashbuckling hero, Rose as a beautiful, nurturing damsel in distress (thanks to a poorly timed seizure).
As she actually gets to know them, Amyās rather disappointed that their romance is not as perfect as she imagined (but sheās rooting for them to get it figured out). She is impressed by Roseās bravery and wit and kindness, but confused by her self-loathing and the uncanny age in her eyes and the way she seems to disregard her limits and personal safety. By linear measures, Rose is only a couple years older than Amy, but all that time (or, well, untime) in the Void has changed her.
Rose looks at Amy and sees echoes of herself: both lost at least one parent at a young age, both have somewhat ādead-endā jobs at nineteen (insofar as there arenāt really avenues for promotion and neither envisions working that role forever), both leave their childhood-bestie-turned-boyfriend behind to travel time and space, both have learnt to be brave when the world doesnāt expect much of them. Of course, because Rose first met Amelia as a child, she has a hard time no longer seeing her as such, and sometimes the way she treats Amy comes off as somewhat patronising or infantilising. Rose also really doesnāt think she should be a role model. As mentioned above, she starts off the story not operating out of an abundance is self-compassion, so anything Amy does that seems like sheās trying to be like or impress Rose is upsetting to Rose also. And another thingāAmelia is all about remembering when all Rose really wants right now is to forget.
Rory also grew up with the stories Amy told about the Doctor and Rose, but he didnāt really believe her, or if he did once, he certainly doesnāt by the time he first meets them. In the two years between defeating Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi and the Pond-Williams wedding, he does some research into both the Doctor and Rose. This goes beyond just reading about dimensional theoryāhe also finds Cliveās old website and Roseās old missing posters. He's pieced together a lot more of the truth about them than Amy has by the time he comes aboard, but heās also Rory about itāpatient, occasionally snarky, rarely pushing things except when itās important. Rose appreciates that he doesnāt ask too many questions, and is irritated when he (correctly) insists she rest or not strain herself when her disabilities are acting up. Itās often easier to tell him about her fears and self-judgment and all that than it is to tell the Doctor, because he seems sort of detached from it all.
Also, I donāt want to sound too bleak about the nature of Rose & the Doctorās relationship because they do get back to a (very) good place by the end of all this!! They are still best friends and still deeply in love and still each otherās favourite person. Itās just that in any relationship there are growing pains, and when one of you is a nine-century-old face-changing alien and the other of you is a human-turned-avatar-for-an-amoral-eldritch-entity, rough patches are perhaps a bit more pronounced than they are for us mere mortals.
Another important note hereāa lot of Pond Era Plus Rose stories just sort of slide Rose into the side of the fic like an observer, or slot her in instead of River, or otherwise reduce her plot centrality. It's hard NOT to do this if you're trying to stay fairly canon compliant. I'm... not so concerned with that in the Moffat era, because there's so little internal consistency and character growth and emotional depth that I'm going to have to build a lot from whole cloth anyhow. Someone once described this series as me doing precision surgery on the canon, but from book 5 on Iād say itās more like exploding the canon and using parts of it to patch together something new in its place.
How will Rose deal with the cracks in time in book 5?
Obviously sheās very time sensitive, and the displacement of the hospital even knocked her off her feet for a hot minute, so how would she deal with such a catastrophic situation?!
love your work btw šø
Thank you!! š She is definitely very time sensitive and connected to the TARDIS so the cracks absolutely affect her, requiring some creative solutions to thingsā¦
slight spoiler (but not really because itās literally in chapter one) below the cut
when the Doctor first widens the crack in young Ameliaās wall to see the big olā Atraxi eye, it triggers a seizure (generalised tonic-clonic, though that wonāt be the only type of seizure she experiences throughout) which prompts the Doctor to take her back into the still-healing TARDIS for testing. But lol my take on āThe Eleventh Hourā involves a lot of the Doctor running around Leadworth carrying Rose bridal-style while sheās either unconscious or mildly injured, and honestly sheās not complaining about it (much) (yet)
The cracks will continue to affect her, not always in the exact same way thoughā¦ but they are potent triggers for her time sensitivity which is itself a potent trigger for her neurological disabilities (migraine & epilepsy but like these are both obviously slightly sci-fi-ed up).
Meanwhile the Doctor has always been protective of Rose in general, has become extra protective of her due to his PTSD from losing her the first time, and then finds himself even more (smotheringly) overprotective when sheās at all incapacitated or even just inconveniencedā¦ Amyās walking into a hell of a powder keg when she first sets foot in the TARDIS
Anyway Iām quite excited to get to the crash of the Byzantium because thatāll be a doozy, but Iām not quite there yetā¦
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The howling series is actually taking over my brain
without too many spoilers:
How will Bad Wolf affect Rose as a disability?
Thank you!! Hmm, I think I can do this without too many spoilers for the futureā¦ but if anyone reading this isnāt caught up with āThe Howlingā series, spoilers for books 1-4 below
Ok so, as of book 4ās ending we have already seen Bad Wolfās impacts show up in the form of migraines and at least one seizure (plus flickering in and out of being, Iām p sure the flickering is done now but the seizing will remain and Iām trying to do some more research to make sure I am at least semi-accurate with that experience)ā¦ can confirm that both types of episodes will continue to recur with trigger points related to Roseās temporal sensitivity as Bad Wolf (and thereās a lot lot lot of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff aheadā¦)
Rose will live with a higher level of fatigue than she did previously, and her temporal senses and telepathic (and especially empathic) abilities, which originated with the original Bad Wolfening but strengthen now that sheās back, will cause their own challenges, sometimes triggering headaches or seizures. Thereās gonna be some definite PTSD from the whole ābeing nothing then destroying myriad worldsā thing.
Iām still exploring a few other ways the whole thing might impact her body in ways that are helpful for her, challenging for her, or sometimes both. Bad Wolf has made it so she can do some things she couldnāt before (obviously) but itās also gonna make some of the things she could do before difficult, sometimes impossible. Iām trying to stay vague here to avoid too many spoilersā¦
BUT
I think the way Iām most excited to write about BW as a disability, and this bit might be slightly spoilery but more of relationship dynamics than of specific plot points per se, is less about the changes to Roseās health itself and more about the way the changes in her influence her relationship with herself and the Doctor. Sheās gonna go through it for a while. Sheās gonna be frustrated with these newfound difficulties. Sheās gonna push herself past the point where itās wise as sheās still learning her new limits. And the Doctor is of course initially gonna go hardcore overprotective as he does. Watching the pair of them navigate how Roseās disabilities necessarily alter both their lives, and seeing them figure out what triggers her and what soothes her, what can be treated and what must simply be waited out, watching her grow from frustration and pain to a fuller understanding and acceptance of her new reality (albeit marked by some level of frustration and pain bc tbh those def donāt go away) and especially watching the Doctor have to come to terms with the fact that Rose cannot be āfixedā/ācuredā and that her disabilities donāt mean he can go making decisions for her or treating her like sheās fragile.
Rose needs care, but everyone needs care. Sometimes that care looks like spending time in the Zero Room in total isolation and silence until a migraine passes. Sometimes that care looks like sitting an adventure or two out. Sometimes that care looks like the Doctor holding her hair while she throws up a bunch. Sometimes that care looks like needing the Doctor to put her in rescue position until a seizure passes, then take her back to the TARDIS to sleep off the postdrome and help her remember when things are fuzzy afterwards. Sometimes that care looks like the Doctor pleading with Pete to make just one (1) flavour of Vitex that doesnāt taste atrocious because itās genuinely the best way to get Rose all the nutrition she needs when she canāt bring herself to eat but it all tastes like, as Jack Harkness will describe it, āsynthetic ass.ā
Mostly that care looks like continuing to love her, respect her, and support her, even and especially when she finds it hardest to love herself.
i had a dream that i went to a special theatre event to celebrate doctor who and they were playing a movie adaptation of what was supposed to be the last three chapters of The Howling, lol. i've been following your work since The Wolf at the Door, and i'm so incredibly hyped for the last three chapters :>
also: happy early birthday!! thank you for sharing your awesome writing skills with the world, i hope you have a great birthday
Omg that is amazing, now Iām so curious if your subconscious film adaptation will match up with the events to come, youāll have to let me know! I take it as a huge compliment to have invaded your subconscious to this extent :) thanks for following along on this journey with me & thanks for the birthday wishes!! š
Question! Say one were to consider making a podfic of The Howling, how would you imagine the crossed out parts would be read aloud? Asking for reasons. Normal ones.
Oooh hohohohoho very good question and one for which Iām not sure I have the answer but Iām excitedā¦ hypotheticallyā¦ (you have my full blessing lol)
I think one possibility that could be cool would be having an overlapped vocal there so it would be the crossed out word at the same time as something like āunā or ānotā (but still in a normal vocal tone rather than super emphasized like in a ānotā joke for example)ā¦ but idk if that would work super well eitherā¦
Official author stance is: get creative with it! That was just one idea but Iām entirely open to seeing where you go with it as long as youāre having fun :)
Also you didnāt ask but because I wanted to share it with someone Iām gonna put it here, Iām working on part 4 wildly out of order and (mild spoiler below the cut, read at your peril)
I just wrote a scene where Rose meets Tony Tyler and Iām silently screaming about it that is all
